10 Ways to Improve your Startup Customer Service
I came across an article recently about problems that customers have been having with a popular and fast-growing tech startup. Mostly these seem to be because of a lack of formalized customer service processes, rather than any massive flaw in the underlying product, team or business model.
I figure that these sorts of growing pains must be pretty common for companies in this position...where growth is so rapid that there almost isn't enough time to catch up and put the right servicing structure in place (at least this is my hypothesis for what is happening).
I think one thing that people worry about is the costs of providing solid, 24/7 service, but the truth is that good customer service and experience don't have to cost the earth.
In fact I think there is a lot that you can do on a tight budget to really create a service culture that matches a beuatifully-designed and useful product. To that end I came up with this list of ideas, which I think any business could (and should) implement pretty quickly:
- Set Expectations About Response Times - People get pretty antsy when they send a message or an email and then don't hear anything back, particularly when they have a problem. They are probably sitting there thinking "Oh my god. Why haven't they answered me? They don't care about my problem. There must be something wrong". So then they send another message and another and it becomes a vicious cycle. However, if you let them know how quickly they can expect a response, say with an auto-reply, then at least they will be able to relax a bit more and not wonder whether or not someone is ever going to reply.
- Try and Beat Those Expectations - If you say you’re going to get back to someone in 12 hours, then that is the minimum that is expected. However its even better when you surprise them by beating their expectations. For instance I love my web hosting company. Whenever I get in touch I am told that someone will get back to me within 1 working day, but I don’t think I have ever had to wait more than a couple of hours for a response.
- Voice is sometimes best - One of the main concerns I have seen raised is the lack of a phone number for critical problems. I know digital service can be work very well, particularly for everyday problems, but in general I subscribe to the philosophy of respecting customer channel of choice, and when someone is stressing out about something really big, then what they really want is to speak to another human being. This doesn’t have to turn into a huge call center and could, for example, be limited to outbound calls for critical cases…but I think its really, really important to have the option.
- Clear Escalation Process - With so much going on, particularly in an exciting and fast-growth environment, problems can get overlooked or even lost among all the other day-to-day activities. Sometimes the person who does pick up on the problem isn’t the right person to deal with it, or they don’t have the authority to take action. Customer Service should be a top priority for everyone from the front-line employee up to the head of service. If someone identifies a customer issue that isn’t getting resolved fast enough, then they need to know exactly what they have to do to get the problem escalated until a solution is found.
- Use Feedback Wisely - One thing that differentiates customer experience leaders is what they do with the feedback they receive, both positive and negative. There are typically three levels of response: i.Customer - fix the customer issue a.s.a.p (within 48 hours if not sooner) ii. Process - understand what processes went wrong and how they need to be fixed (within a month or so) iii. Strategy - think about how customer experience issues feed into the overall company strategy
- Be more proactive than reactive - one of the best things you can do is to try and figure out what is hurting customers before they have an opportunity to tell you. A great source of information is front-line employees.There is a huge difference between companies who are going out of their way to be customer-centric, and those who wait for the results of their most recent survey
- Engage with Detractors - detractors doesn’t have to mean the formal NPS definition, but pretty much anyone who is mad at you, and even more so those who start tweeting or writing about it. Ask them if they are willing to spend some time with you to help you figure out what you need to do to improve. Invite them to a working lunch. There is an awesome story about a Chick-fil-A manager who invited a detractor to come to a tasting with the chef to help perfect the recipe.
- Shout about how you’re improving - most companies ask for feedback from customers and then go off and work on it internally. One really cool idea for customer engagement is telling all your customers about how you are using their feedback to improve, maybe through a blog, tweets etc. Virgin Media is a great example here, creating a website for telling their customers about all the customer initiatives they are working on thanks to their feedback.
- Be known for being a customer advocate - I have an American Express card and I love it. Why? Because I know that Amex has my back, and I know it because I see it every day and every time I interact with them. Last year I was hit up for about $4,000 USD of fraud on my card, but resolving it was the most painless process imaginable.
- Passionate Employees - This goes without saying, however I have worked with far too many supposedly ‘customer-centric’ companies to know that this doesn’t always happen. I am amazed by the number of people who expect first class customer results, but then hire the first person who comes along, pay them terribly and treat them even worse. Zappos knows exactly what they are doing in this regard and they are definitely a role model.